Deachman: The Widowhood effect, or knowing when to leave the party

Yvonne Temple says she likes to leave a party when it’s at its peak, before most of the other guests have left, before the conversations have exhausted themselves, before the champagne goes flat and it all just kind of goes blah.

I met her a month ago, not at a party, but at the home of Margaret Lisinski, a 95-year-old woman for whom Yvonne provides daily care. I was interviewing the older woman, whose life forever changed — and not for the better — 75 years ago, when the train she was on had been struck by another train.

Dozens died in that Almonte wreck, and Margaret’s story was a sombre reminder of how such calamities can reverberate for generations, long after the news cameras, the police and the firefighters have left. I was not expecting that when I set out to research the accident. At best, I’d hoped to speak to people with first-hand accounts; I didn’t know that some of them would still bear such raw and painful scars, both physical and emotional, so many years later.

On the wall above Margaret’s bed hangs a wooden crucifix. Her religious faith, Yvonne explained, was what helped her navigate the many days and nights of anger, and an ensuing lifetime of pain. I confess I lack Margaret’s conviction of faith, but I am comforted for her that she possesses it.

Also hanging above her bed was a framed picture of skaters on the Rideau Canal. I asked Margaret if she skated. Yes, she replied, she’d skated often before the accident, but never since. She couldn’t explain to me why the picture was there, but she’s at a stage in her life now where some things are difficult to recall. Perhaps it puts her in mind of better days. Maybe she just likes it. It’s possible that it’s been there so long that she no longer even notices it.

As I packed my gear and readied to leave her apartment, I found myself thinking about how people get through life’s worst moments, and how, sometimes, they don’t.

I wondered how I might respond if I had been in Margaret’s shoes following the train wreck, but without the solace of faith.

I thought, too, about the crucifix and the picture, and how, in my mind, they formed a beautifully sad and perhaps hopeful pair, a slight but unforgettable lyric in the quiet song of a life. The image of the two together will, I suspect, remain a small part of me for a long time, one of the innumerable experiences we each undergo, whether fleeting or pivotal, that contribute to shaping our lives and our thoughts.

That was when Yvonne told me about her obituary collection, and about leaving parties on a high note.

Every day, she and her husband, Bob, enjoy a languorous coffee over the morning newspapers in the bright dining nook of their 12th floor Carling Avenue apartment. The two are curious about all kinds of things and share stories back and forth. But for the past couple of years, Yvonne has been noticing more of a certain kind of death notice, and for about a year now she’s been clipping and saving them. They involve couples that have died only months, days or sometimes just hours apart.

“It is with an emptying sadness and hearts full of love,” says another, “we announce the passing of our mother and father after brief illnesses. Dad passed away on Sunday, May 7 followed by Mom on Saturday, May 27, 2017.”

A third, for the deaths of a couple in February 2016, included an RSVP phone number for a celebration-of-life dinner held more than a year later at the Golden Palace restaurant (coincidentally visible from the Temples’ apartment). Curious, Yvonne called the number and spoke to a son of the deceased couple, and asked how they died. The father suffered a heart attack shovelling snow. The mother, who had dementia and was not told of her husband’s death, died just eight days later.

When Yvonne reads one of these notices, she finds herself thinking, “I wonder what will happen if he passes away.”

What she really means, of course, is “What will happen if Bob passes away first?” and, as much as anyone can guess these things, she hazards an answer: She’ll go, too, and, if necessary, on her own terms.

“I don’t like to linger,” she says. “I like to leave at the height of a party, and my life is a party, and if the participant in this party, which is Bob, goes, it’s only downhill from there.”

While touched by his wife’s devotion, Bob says he doesn’t particularly like such talk. “I’m not saying I have the Catholic philosophy, but I think that life is sacred. If you were healthy and capable of getting around, I don’t think you should do that.”

Bob is 76 and Yvonne is 69. They’ve been married to one another, the second go-round for both, for 21 years. They are, Yvonne says, very happy and close, and it’s easy to believe this; after all, who else beyond their teen years ever says, “I don’t want to go on living without you?”

It turns out that Yvonne is hardly alone with these feelings.

Numerous studies around the globe have identified what is known as the widowhood effect — the increased likelihood that a recently widowed spouse will die in the months following the death of their spouse. Not necessarily of their own doing, of course, but the numbers certainly suggest a strong bond between love and death.

A 2008 study examining 10-year data of more than 370,000 elderly married couples in the United States described the widowhood effect as “one of the best documented examples of the effect of social relations on health.” It noted that widowed partners had been found to face a 30 to 90 per cent increase in mortality in the three months following their partners’ deaths, and a 15 per cent greater likelihood in the months thereafter. Its own findings suggested an overall increase in mortality for bereaved husbands at 18 per cent, and 16 per cent for widowed wives.

Another study, published in 2013 and using the University of Michigan’s biennial Health and Retirement Study, concluded that becoming widowed was associated with a 48 per cent increase in the risk of mortality, with one-third of the added risk attributed to a drop in socioeconomic standing.

In Canada, meanwhile, a 2007 study of suicide rates showed that the age-standardized rate for widowed males was 18.2 per 100,000 — higher than divorced (15) or married (8.2) men, although less than the 25.6 per 100,000 found in single men.

The rate for widowed women was 15.3, much higher than married (2.3) and divorced (6.0) women, and almost twice the rate of single women (7.7).

“It’s interesting to see this happening,” Yvonne says, “and I think it’s happening more than we realize.

“What possessed these couples, if it was done voluntarily, to do so, and what is it in nature that causes couples to die in such a short period of time?”

She slowly forms a ball with her hands, the fingers of one interlocking with those of the other. “You start as individuals, but over time, this is what happens. … You intertwine and you become one. And when one of them falls off, the other is lost.

“It’s this human ability to become intertwined, and I never thought I could feel this way. But at this point, the way I feel today, if Bob were to die, I’d want to go. I wouldn’t want to stay. I don’t want to live. What for?”

Yvonne is from Holland, which shows in her matter-of-fact demeanour. “In Holland, we have fewer taboos, and I have no fear or problem talking about death.”

When her father died, in 2011, she, her sisters and a nephew washed and prepared his body for his funeral. “My nephew shaved him. It’s nothing to be afraid of or disgusted by. Death can be beautiful.”

Last January, meanwhile, Bob was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He has since recovered, but the process brought the possibility of his death, and Yvonne’s survival of that death, to the fore. And she thinks about the woman with dementia who died soon after her husband, and wonders about the link between love and death.

“She must have been aware that she was alone, and that triggered her body to shut down,” she says.

“Will I try to do something about it?” she adds of her own end. “Yes, I would. I say that, but I know that the urge to survive is often stronger, so I cannot guarantee that. So that’s an uncertainty. But I think about it a lot, and, being Dutch, I’ve talked about it.”

Some may condemn Yvonne for her thoughts, while others will just as surely applaud. I see these obituaries as tenuous but tangible links to these other people’s lives — lives that have not inconsequentially become a part of Yvonne’s. They are similar in a way to the crucifix and picture that I return to in my mind’s eye when I think of Margaret. In my case, they encapsulate a certain sadness haunted by hope. I believe that for Yvonne, the love that she and Bob hold for one another is reflected in the lives, and deaths, of these strangers who hold sway over her.

Margaret Lisinski had her legs crushed in a train accident 75 years ago, an incident that she blames, rightly or not, for the fact she never married or had a family. Whatever decision Yvonne might make if and when the time comes, I can only wish we all love someone nearly so much.

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